“Father truly oversteps. Mobilizing even a guest for an Iron-Wrought hunt? Are we so incompetent?”
Lady Sera, sole daughter of House Dredge’s patriarch, voiced her disbelief. Her words were sharp, cutting through the morning's chill air. She wore a practical tunic and reinforced trousers, far from the silks expected of her station. Turning to Finnian, her gaze flickered.
“No offense to our guest, of course. Merely my father’s penchant for… theatrics.”
“Chiding the Head of House, noona? Your impudence knows no bounds.”
Lord Valerius, Sera’s cousin and a nephew of the Dredge patriarch, retorted in a low growl. His posture, too, spoke of readiness, a lean silhouette against the city’s rising smokestacks.
Their eyes met, a brief clash of steel, before Valerius shifted his attention to Finnian. “First time, isn’t it? I am Valerius Dredge. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Finnian offered a curt nod. “Likewise.” His gaze drifted past the young nobles, settling on the dozen Dredge knights assembled behind them. Their polished greaves and dented breastplates gleamed dull in the smog-laden light. Nerves etched their faces, a stark contrast to their masters' casual disdain.
This was no pleasure outing. Four knights had already fallen to whatever lurked beyond the city gates, leaving no survivors. Their grim mission weighed heavy.
Moments later, the party moved, a small, arrogant procession toward the north gate. Their boots clicked on the soot-stained cobblestones.
Veridian’s populace knelt, heads bowed deeply as the Dredge sigil passed. Only the city watchmen, armed with truncheons and dull swords, remained standing, their gazes lowered, not kneeling. Finnian noted their thin armor, their weary faces. Commoners, armed to enforce order, yet utterly useless against anything truly dangerous. They would crumble before a single Iron-Wrought beast, or even an inexperienced noble like Valerius.
Beyond the city’s formidable walls, the world transformed. A cracked brick road, remnant of some forgotten empire, snaked north. Ten days of beast attacks had scoured it clean of travelers. Wind whistled, carrying the metallic tang of distant factories.
“Let’s just finish this and return to comfort.” Lady Sera muttered, scuffing at loose grit with her boot. Her voice held a note of weary petulance. She walked slightly ahead, her shoulders squared.
Finnian, trailing a step behind, studied her back. He felt a presence at his elbow. Valerius’s voice dropped, a conspiratorial whisper. “Finnian, do you… find my noona interesting?”
“No.” Finnian shook his head immediately. Sera’s flippant overtures over the past few days, since their rather explosive first encounter, meant little. She was carefree, perhaps even frivolous, far from any ideal he held. To marry into a noble house would shackle him, bind him to their intricate web of power. The Dredge library, impressive as it was, wasn't worth a lifetime of gilded cages.
Relief visibly eased Valerius’s rigid shoulders. “Excellent.”
Finnian didn’t quite grasp the full implication of the question, but his answer clearly satisfied the young lord.
---
An hour passed in brisk marching. Distant factory hum faded, replaced by the rustle of overgrown scrubland and the occasional clang of shifting iron in the ground. Here, the raw, untamed earth bled through Veridian’s industrial veneer.
Suddenly, the lead knights froze. Ahead, a broken cart lay overturned, its splintered wood stained dark. Scattered around it, blood-soaked rags fluttered in the breeze. An attack, recent and brutal.
“That… thing?” Valerius’s voice was hushed.
“Most likely,” Sera confirmed, her earlier boredom vanished, replaced by a keen alertness. “We sealed our side of the northern road. These must have been travelers coming from the wilds…”
Finnian moved forward, scanning the wreckage. The coppery scent of blood was muted, telling him the attack occurred hours ago, not minutes. Ragged tears in the fabric suggested sharp claws or teeth. He crouched, tracing a grotesquely large, five-fingered print in the dust beside the cart, disturbingly human-like in its structure, yet far too massive.
“A Grit-ape,” he murmured, the name rising unbidden from some forgotten whisper of lore. He’d seen ancient sketches in the deepest archives, heard half-told tales of beasts twisted by the very grit and grime of Veridian’s birth. The handprint, the sheer force, it all clicked into place. The city had its own monsters, birthed from its relentless progress.
“A… what?” Valerius asked, stepping closer.
Finnian pointed to the print. “Observe the hand.”
“Ah.” Valerius nodded, though his expression remained puzzled.
“It likely attacked the merchants, then retreated into the undergrowth,” Finnian explained. “We can follow its trail.”
“Tracking… I lack the knack for such trivial magic. Valerius, your thoughts?” Lady Sera posed the question, a hint of impatience in her tone.
“Not my forte either. Perhaps one of the knights could…”
“Allow me.” Finnian stepped forward. He felt the faint echoes of violence, the displacement of energy, a subtle tremor in the very earth.
Lady Sera’s eyes brightened. “Do you possess such a bloodline talent, then?”
“Merely… an uncommon familiarity with such tasks,” Finnian lied smoothly. His family’s true lineage was a secret he guarded with his life.
Focusing, Finnian subtly extended his senses. He didn’t cast a spell, not in the way these nobles understood. Instead, he channeled the raw forces within him, a delicate ripple of creation, feeling the disturbed molecular bonds in the environment. The faint, metallic tang of spilled blood on the rags amplified, drawing him, not just to the victim’s essence, but to the disruption of matter around it. A subtle path opened to his mind’s eye, a whisper of disrupted earth leading left, away from the road.
“This way.”
Following Finnian’s lead, the party veered off the brick road, plunging into the denser scrubland. The lack of a clear path meant little to them. The nobles moved with an unnatural agility, their magically enhanced bodies easily clearing obstacles. Even the knights bounded with surprising grace, covering four or five meters in a single leap.
For what felt like an eternity, they followed the phantom trail. Finnian’s senses stretched, his focus absolute, filtering out the constant hum of Veridian’s distant industry and the chatter of the nobles behind him. The air grew thicker, heavier.
Eventually, they arrived at a murky stream, its surface reflecting the sooty sky. Several lean, grey deer, startled by their approach, crashed through the undergrowth in a panic.
“The trail ends here,” Finnian stated, his voice low. “It washed itself clean.”
“A mere beast, attempting to thwart pursuit?” Sera scoffed, her disbelief evident.
“Perhaps it simply sought to cleanse itself,” Finnian countered, recalling fragments of ancient texts that spoke of even beasts possessing primal instincts beyond simple survival.
Dispelling his subtle tracking, Finnian allowed his other senses to return fully. The sudden influx of the damp, earthy air, mingled with the lingering smell of the stream, was almost overwhelming. Then, a new scent, sharp and acrid, assaulted his nose. A potent, animalistic musk.
Finnian spun, his heart hammering. A pair of enormous, molten-gold eyes blazed at him from the dappled shadows of the thick bushes behind them.
“Behind us!”
A guttural shriek tore through the air. A massive Grit-ape, easily two meters tall, erupted from the undergrowth. Its hide was a patchwork of coarse, matted fur and plates of calloused skin, the color of slag and rust. Its powerful limbs ended in disproportionately large, five-fingered hands, like those he’d seen imprinted on the dust. It began to hurl fist-sized chunks of compacted Veridian grime and sharp gravel, each projectile whistling through the air, imbued with an unseen, potent force.
“Aaaagh!”
“Dodge!”
A few knights cried out, struck hard, their armor denting with sickening thuds. Finnian reacted instantly, a blur of motion as he launched himself sideways, narrowly avoiding a volley of razor-sharp stones that gouged deep furrows where he'd stood. He watched in appalled disbelief as Lady Sera and Lord Valerius, rather than evade, thrust their nearest knights forward, using them as living shields. The impacts rang out, bone-jarring. One knight slumped, a gash bleeding above his temple.
“U-ugh, are you alri—”
“Attack!” Lady Sera’s voice sliced through the air. She shoved the injured knight aside with casual disregard.
Eight remaining knights, their faces grim, drew their swords and spears. They charged, a disciplined wave of steel, converging on the lumbering beast. But the Grit-ape let out another ear-splitting shriek, its golden eyes alight with savage cunning. It vanished into the bushes, a blur of soot-colored fur and powerful limbs. It bounded from one thick-trunked tree to another, covering vast distances with terrifying speed, a wind-borne shadow. Its sheer bulk belied its agility; the knights, for all their magical enhancements, could not hope to match it.
Everyone stood dumbfounded, watching the monster escape. Finnian did not. His hand moved, a blur of controlled power. He bent the very air, drew a fist-sized chunk of compacted earth from the ground, shaping it, hardening it with a subtle kiss of divine fire. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he launched the projectile. It flew, a dark streak, imbued with his will, with strengthening, acceleration, and a precise homing pursuit. The stone arced, curving around several trees, a silent hunter.
It struck the Grit-ape’s waist with a sickening thud. A pained shriek erupted. The beast stumbled, tumbling from its perch, crashing to the ground. It writhed, unable to rise, a broken thing.
“Die!” Lady Sera shrieked, her hand extended, palm open. Flames erupted from her fingertips, coalescing into a serpentine form, thick as a gas-pipe. The fiery serpent lunged, its maw snapping around the Grit-ape, incinerating it in a flash of heat. A dozen meters of surrounding scrubland erupted in flames, consumed instantly. The speed, the sheer scale of the attack, left Finnian cold. It was raw, devastating power, far beyond what he himself could easily channel in such a devastating, overt display.
*The Dredge’s Cinder-Heart Bloodline,* Finnian realized, a cold knot forming in his stomach. *My fire is divine, but theirs… theirs is a furnace given form.* Lighting a simple flame was easy. But this was a consuming inferno, a force of nature bred in their very bones.
Following Sera’s display, Lord Valerius conjured a dozen flaming spears, each a shard of molten fury. They rained down, impaling the already burning Grit-ape, reducing it to smoking ash. The hunt was over.
A collective sigh of relief swept through the remaining knights.
“Gods, I felt the chill when those stones flew, noona.” Valerius clutched his chest, feigning fright.
“Scared, were you?” Sera shot back, a smirk playing on her lips. “You shrieked like a boiler pipe about to burst.”
“I did not!”
While the two cousins bickered, Finnian moved to the fallen knights. He knelt, checking their pulses, assessing their wounds. The injured groaned, their pain a raw counterpoint to the nobles’ casual banter.
“My arm… I think it’s snapped,” one whispered, cradling a twisted limb.
“His head’s still bleeding, what do we do?” another stammered, pointing to the knight Sera had pushed aside.
Finnian produced a small phial from his satchel. “Apply this ointment. It’ll slow the bleeding.” Miraculously, none had died. The ones used as shields had suffered the worst, fractured bones, concussions. Finnian’s jaw tightened. He recalled his mother’s bitter words: *To nobles, knights are nothing more than expendable dogs.* The truth of it, delivered with such brutal clarity moments ago, resonated deeply within him. Their bodies, magically enhanced, were surely far more resilient than an ordinary man's. Yet, they had sacrificed others.
Valerius noticed Finnian’s stare. “Hmm? Something amiss?”
“No, nothing,” Finnian replied, his voice flat. But his eyes, he knew, betrayed a subtle, simmering contempt as he looked at the two Dredge nobles.
Sera waved him over, her voice bright. “More importantly, guest, approach! Time to absorb the Anomalous Essence!”
“Yes.”
Finnian joined them. Three figures stood side by side next to the smoldering ashes of the Grit-ape. They extended their hands. A shimmering, pale green glow emanated from the remnants, a wispy vapor, seeping into their skin. Finnian felt the familiar rush, a shiver of pleasure as the raw energy flooded his being, strengthening the delicate, innate channels within him. He gauged the growth; stronger than a scavenger-dog, weaker than a mountain-ram. Not exceptional, yet together, the three of them had gained a substantial surge.
*The essence doesn't diminish even with multiple absorbers,* Finnian observed. Up to four individuals could draw the same amount of power, a peculiarity of these Iron-Wrought beasts. This was why noble houses often hunted in fours, never wasting a precious slot on a knight. It underscored their inherent belief in their own superiority, even in the face of death.
“Ah, I cannot absorb more.” Sera sighed, her hand dropping. Valerius grunted in agreement. A faint, pale green light began to leak from their forms, dispersing into the air. This was the “dispersion” — the body’s natural rejection when it reached its innate limit.
Finnian continued to absorb, draining the last vestiges of the Grit-ape’s power. He felt the envious glares of the two nobles on him, a familiar weight. His capacity was vast, seemingly without end.
---
On the return trek to Veridian, Lady Sera and Lord Valerius recounted the battle with exaggerated flair. Their boasts of heroism, their cries of valor, echoed hollow against Finnian’s memory of their actions. The injured knights, silent and grim, limped behind, their wounds a stark counterpoint to the nobles’ grand narrative. Finnian walked on, the weight of the city’s grime and the heavier weight of its injustices settling deep within him.